Extensive Port Upgrades

[Tiberius Aurelius Cotta]

who uses them?

i thought i'd never touch them, but in my Romani campaign, my withdrawal (and sacking) of Atiqa, Kart-Hadast, and Adrumeto meant i have a HUGE amount of money, and they are the only way to spend all that cash...

Who else uses them, and are they really worth it?

[johnhughthom]

I use them for the exact same reason, to soak up cash. I also like to have something being built everywhere and eventually they are all thats left. I often wonder how many turns it would take to break even with them though, all they do is give an extra trade fleet.

[Swordmaster]

In some places, that extra fleet can yield 500 mnai/turn, which means that if your upgrade cost 36,000, it'll take 72 turns to return the investment, which is only 18 years. Not very much IMHO, so I build them when I got most other important buildings constructed.

[QuintusSertorius]

I always put them in when a settlement is almost completely developed, and I need somewhere to sink money.

I also use them in my building queues when I'm awash with cash to simply tie up funds and prevent my treasury growing too large.

[Cambyses]

From my experience:

Some of the factions with more limited economic opportunities (ie Lusotannan) find the upgrades to be really useful to help raise their quarterly income.

People like Romans with such a large build tree tend to build them only much later on when the economy is massive already and they are less necessary.

[kingsword]

They certainly do. As pointed out above, you'll be getting your investment 10 times over the course of the game. As naval trade always makes the most money in TW games, what better to invest in anyway?